Fascinating to read Paddy Ashdown’s comments about David Cameron on the Independent website:
“I really believe this has all the makings of one of the worst Governments of our time.
I think Mr Cameron is one of the most dangerous Prime Minsters I can remember. Not because he is not a decent man. He is a decent man with broadly decent instincts.
Nor because he does not believe in anything (except that Britain would be better run by people like him – though that is true too).
Nor because he intends to do damage. He does it all unwittingly. But that does not lessen the damage.
He is so short term, casual and unthinking about the things he grabs hold of.
And the consequences? in 70 days (just 70 days) he has put the Union at risk, ditto our future in Europe, placed a charge of dynamite under our constitution with [EVEL] and put a noose around the neck of the BBC.
Not bad considering all that has been done by accident.”
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, GCMG, CH, KBE, PC, former SBS captain, Liberal Democrat leader and now political grandee Lord Ashdown of the House of Lords has discovered what the rest of us have known for years. So, what took him so long?
I am very worried that Ashdown thinks this “has all the makings of one of the worst governments of our time” because there was me thinking the last one was. You know the one, the right wing Tory government in which some Liberals had jobs, tripling tuition fees, introducing the Bedroom Tax, inflicting austerity on the poorest in society and paring back public services, all at the same time doubling the national debt, borrowing more money than every Labour government in history put together. And Ashdown is worried this one might be worse? God help us.
As I recall, Ashdown was a strong supporter of Nick Clegg (remember him?), urging him to join a coalition, or join a Tory cabinet as it turned out, so presumably he did tell Clegg at some point between 2010 and 2015 of his fears? Or did he not want to spoil Clegg’s fun at being in government for the first time in donkey’s years? After all, it would never happen again in his lifetime, Ashdown might have thought, so just see it through to the end. I am not remotely close to the throne of power in this country but I can see, from this distance, that Cameron is a consummate actor, a trained salesman highly capable of a decent soundbite and reliable enough to repeat the messages his spin doctors tell him to employ. Surely, Ashdown could see long ago that Cameron is always kept away from normal people and was never, in a million years, going to debate the other party leaders for fear of being found out? Ashdown, this great politician who is always called up to give his considered opinion on everything, must have spotted this one coming?
Cameron has no great vision, saying from the start that he wanted to be PM because he thought he’d be good at it; Cameron, must mainly Osborne, have always been short term tacticians and the PM’s tactics over Europe have been both shambolic and transparent all at the same time. I too think he has decent instincts, witness his support for overseas aid, equal marriage and even the idea, if not the reality, of his ill thought through Big Society, all of which suggested he was a man with a heart. But his judgement over Libya, Syria, of building alliances in Europe, his flagrant disregard of the damage he caused the union with Scotland before the election – all of these and more suggest a man who is exactly how Ashdown describes him, but one that many outsiders to the political establishment saw years ago.
My view is that Ashdown is trying to make a bigger point here, that the Tory Party has reverted to type now that the Liberals are unable to apply a brake to their nastier policies and this is what happen when you give a mandate to a right wing party like the Tories. I’m afraid I don’t buy it. Before the 2010 election, there were many issues where the Lib Dems were attacking Labour from the left, but soon after it, they were singing off the same song sheet as the Tories, with the likes of Danny Alexander and David Laws seemingly even more right wing than their coalition partners.
The reality is that the Lib Dems were part of the problem. They were the enablers of the last Tory government, not the brake on them as they always pretended. It can be argued that the new government might not be so nasty with a few Lib Dems on board, but they had little effect on the last one, something that Ashdown appears not to have noticed.
